Visualization: A Look Before You Leap Mental Rehearsal Helps Athletes Make The Most Of A Performance

August 9, 1988|By William Stockton, New York Times

Increasing numbers of athletes are turning to a sports psychology training technique known as visualization to sharpen their competitive edge. The technique involves mentally rehearsing for a competition, playing ''movies'' in the mind over and over of a superb past performance or the ideal performance.

As the Summer Olympics approach, we are likely to hear more and more about athletes headed for Seoul who are using visualization to enhance their skills. Sports psychologists report that Olympic teams from other countries have been using the technique for years and are ahead of the Americans. Virtually every U.S. Olympic team preparing for Seoul is reported to be working with a sports psychologist to learn the subtleties of mental rehearsal.

Viewers of the 1984 Olympics perhaps remember some athletes who used visualization. Dwight Stones, a high jumper, performed an elegant, captivating dance as he stood before the bar, rehearsing how he would leap.

Sports psychologists say that visualization need not be for top-level competitive athletes only. They say mental rehearsal can help weekend athletes sharpen their skills and even can play a role in a recreational athlete's daily exercise routine.

Of course, some people still think visualization has a certain air of psychological mumbo-jumbo. To others, visualization seems patently obvious; those who mentally rehearse a skill in advance are obviously going to do better, they say.

Marlin MacKenzie, a professor of education and director of the Sports Performance Laboratory at Teachers College of Columbia University, has found in his research that elite athletes often practice visualization without even realizing it.

MacKenzie advises athletes, including weekend warriors, to use their minds to make what he calls ''meta-pictures'' by mentally floating out of their bodies as they perform and watching themselves. Runners might watch themselves run by, for example.

''Make that picture of yourself running and see what you would like to change,'' he said. ''Then float back into the body and make the correction and then float out of your body and see if you made the correction.''

Visualization is best done in advance, the experts agree. The less awareness of visualization when actually performing the skill, the better.

Jerry Lynch, a sports psychologist who wrote the book The Total Runner, advocates practicing visualization after becoming totally relaxed. He recommends various relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, transcendental meditation or systematically relaxing the face muscles.

Visualization may be most useful to someone exercising for fitness when it comes to motivation day in and day out to go on yet another run or plunge into the pool for another daily swim.

For example, the runner facing a familiar, torturous hill should visualize himself reaching the top without having to walk and then regaining his wind as he descends.

Of course, all this sounds a bit like the children's story of ''The Little Engine That Could.'' Visualization is the power of positive thinking raised to a more formal level for the athlete. Some might liken it to the placebo effect, identified by medical researchers who found that people often feel better because they think they are taking an effective drug when, in fact, they were given a sugar pill. If we tell ourselves we are going to do better -- and believe it -- we often do better.